Shoshannah Hensley hasn’t seen her biological father since she was just a toddler, but she’s never given up on finding him.
The 23-year-old, who lives in Post Falls, Idaho, was working her shift at an Exxon station Sunday night when she met a man that would change her life.
A scruffy man she didn’t recognize walked into the station and quickly handed Hensley his food stamp card.
“As far as I knew he was just another gentleman on the streets coming in to the store,” she told KHQ.
But the moment she looked down, Hensley immediately recognized the name on the card.
“He asked me what his balance was and I saw the name and my heart dropped,” she recalled. “I said, ‘What’s your middle name,’ and he said, ‘Eugene’ and I said, ‘You’re my biological father! I’ve been searching for you for over 20 years.’”
“We both started shaking,” Brian Hensley, Shoshannah’s father, told KHQ.
Seeing his daughter for the first time in two decades has already been a huge wakeup call for Hensley, who’s now working toward getting off the streets and staying sober for good.
«I don’t wanna cry,» he told KHQ through tears. «When you miss a child, you feel empty for years.»
Shoshannah had searched for her father so many times that she lost count, but she never expected that he would be living so close to her.
Now that they’ve finally been reunited, Hensley says he’s never letting his daughter go again.
«I’m going to be there in every way. Whatever it takes,» he told KHQ.
